


Self-sacrifice

by lopingloup



Series: Whumptober 2018 [23]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, The Iliad - Homer
Genre: Angst, Battle, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Dead Patroclus, Gen, Greek gods, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mythology - Freeform, SO, Swordfighting, Swords, The Iliad, Trojan War, War, Whump, achilleus being his usual angry self, but i headcanon that Hektor survives, hektor being a brave idiot, i've ticked major character death to be carefulk, up to interpretation i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 12:23:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19005727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lopingloup/pseuds/lopingloup
Summary: A re-telling of Achilleus and Hektor's fight where Hektor doesn't run.





	Self-sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while back but, oh man, I still have so many feelings for these guys. I could write a whole longfic on these two but here's an angsty one-shot instead. 
> 
> So I've tagged it as Major character death, because that's canon, and the fic ending may interpreted that way, but I headcanon that Hektor survives.
> 
> Thanks to Imperial_Dragon for being the bestest beta :D

Hektor couldn’t breathe. Achilleus circled him, his helmet glaringly bright in the searing sun, and Hektor could do little more than try to focus. This wasn’t battle, with its frenzied clashing and screaming and blood slick beneath his sandals. The ground beneath them was just dry dust and Hektor swallowed around the lump in his throat as he tried to hold the frayed edges of himself together. He felt like the land was shimmering around the edges of his eyesight and he was afraid that any second he might just crumple under the weight of the thousands of eyes watching them, with the gaze of his family, his people, weighing the heaviest.

Achilleus feigned forwards, light on his feet and terrifyingly fast, and Hektor lurched backwards wildly, so that his foot skidded out from underneath him and he landed on his elbow in the dirt. He scrambled back to his feet, furious at himself and trembling. Achilleus laughed and Hektor, despite the heat, shivered. Achilleus had gods on his side, and divinity in his blood and Hektor heard the power of him in the mocking rumble of his laugh. Hektor was just a man, a man who’d faced battle enough to know what it was to take his life in his hands, but he’d never felt this afraid. There had never been so much to lose.

“Come, little lamb,” Achilleus said, low enough that the words seemed intended for Hektor’s ears alone. “Enough play.”

Hektor could do little more than react when Achilleus came at him, the first blow barely deflected by Hektor’s shield and holding enough power that it landed with a ringing _clash_ and numbed his arm up to his shoulder. But Achilleus just hit again, battering him backwards with the force of a horse at gallop behind his sword arm.

Hektor deflected again and again, just barely keeping that flashing metal from opening him up as easily as gutting a fish. Another blow to Hektor’s shield shattered the wood entirely and spooked by the explosive _crack_ , Hektor feared that the crack of the wood had been the breaking of his arm, or his ribs. He skittered backwards, dizzily shaking the shield’s remains from his barely-responding arm.

Achilleus didn’t grant him a second but brought his sword down from above so that Hektor barely managed to jerk himself sideways and stop his skull being cleaved into two. Achilleus hit again, at his side, his shoulder, his knees, and Hektor knew he needed to go on the offensive but he could do nothing but try to defend himself. Each blow was heavy enough that Hektor didn’t think it would be long before he couldn’t even deflect the hits and his arm just folded under the weight. There was nothing human in the power of Achilleus’s sword, nor in his black eyes.

Achilleus laughed, swinging a lethal blow towards him that, when Hektor tried to deflect it, shoved him violently backwards under the incredible force of it, stumbling sideways with panic quivering inside him. Achilleus had only been toying with him, hadn’t even shown his full strength yet, and Hektor could barely defend himself.

Hektor saw Achilleus’s shoulder twitch minutely and he moved before he consciously knew the reason for it. Metal clashed into the side of Hektor’s helmet and he realised, as a deafening ringing sung in his ears, that Achilleus had stabbed at his throat and Hektor’s reflex reaction to jerk sideways had saved his life. The ear-splitting ringing from Achilleus’s sword hitting Hektor’s helmet was horrific and he one-handedly wrenched off his dented helmet, casting it aside so that it landed with a dull thud on the dust.

Achilleus had paused for just a second, his sword still hanging in the air like he’d assumed that would be the killing blow and was taken aback that Hektor was still alive. Then he, too, removed his helmet. Hektor’s hair was sweat-saturated and clinging to his forehead, where Achilleus looked like a god, still, with his hyacinthian hair and cold eyes.

“You should run,” Achilleus told him, in that otherworldly voice that reverberated at the base of Hektor’s spine. Hektor stared at him and struggled not to do as Achilleus said; to run for his life.

“Too many people are relying on me,” he managed

Achilleus struck out with a furious but too-wide strike that Hektor managed to evade. Pure fury flickered over the Achaean’s cruelly beautiful face.

“Am I supposed to pity you?” Achilleus spat. “You who killed my lover, who wears the spoils of that ill-fated battle exactly like the arrogant,” he hit out at Hektor, their swords clashing like lightning in the glaring sun, “pathetic,” Achilleus’s sword bit into Hektor’s forearm and cut to the bone when his sword arm couldn’t find the strength to deflect it. Hektor screamed, blood streaming down his arm as Achilleus tugged his sword free of the ragged gash in Hektor’s arm, “unworthy wretch that you are.”

“I didn’t know!” Hektor yelled as he twisted away from another hit. He could barely hold his sword up, let alone hold up against Achilleus’s grief-stricken wrath.

“You killed him!” Achilleus’s wild, manic blow struck Hektor’s battered sword from his shaking hand and damn-near took Hektor’s head with it, except that he dropped sideways and ended up sprawled on his back, gasping, with Achilleus bearing down on him, the sun haloing his hair.

“ _You_ left him!” Hektor cried as he threw his arm over his head, braced for metal through his chest, or stomach if Achilleus wished to be cruel, and Hektor didn’t think he’d ever seen the face of someone crueller.

There was a sudden, crushing weight on his chest and Hektor tried to gulp at the dusty air but couldn’t. He’d heard that being stabbed could feel like a punch at first, but it wasn’t a sword, it was Achilleus’s foot on Hektor’s chest, his shadow hanging over Hektor and blocking out the sun. His sword was clenched in one, huge hand and Hektor, barely able to breathe or think, stared up at the son of a goddess and didn’t understand why he wasn’t dead.

“You slaughtered him,” Achilleus hissed foully, spit flying from his lips. “His death was your fault, not mine.”

Hektor couldn’t breathe but he’d be damned if he didn’t force Achilleus to face the truth, before the man-god severed his head from his shoulders.

“He fought,” Hektor rasped, “because you abandoned…your people.” He dragged in another breath through clenched teeth, glaring up at Achilleus, the bastard. “It’s simple for you to…be brave; you who always wins. But…Patroklus and-”

A sword point jabbed far too close to Hektor’s eye and he flinched. “You have no right to speak his name.”

Hektor screwed up his courage, because Achilleus was going to kill him regardless. “Patroklus,” he spat, “and I, we’re but mortals.” Achilleus’s foot was making it near impossible to breathe and Hektor thought another minute under that pressure and his ribs would cave like an apple under the wheels of a cart but he forced the words out. “And yet…we fought for our people. Where…were you?”

Achilleus stared down at him, terrible in the mad twist of his mouth and his feverish eyes, but something human flickered over his face and for just a second, Hektor saw a man who was in desperate pain.

Hektor’s vision was greying at the edges with lack of air and his head dropped back into the dust when he couldn’t hold it up anymore, his arm thrown out to the side, gushing blood onto the sand.

The weight disappeared from his chest all of a sudden and Hektor choked on an excruciating cough as he sucked air desperately into his lungs.

“Get up,” Achilleus ordered. Hektor couldn’t move, could only drag air in.

A second later, a solid kick to Hektor’s ribs knocked him sideways and Hektor reluctantly dragged his sword from the sand and forced himself to stagger to his feet, looking up at Achilleus from under sweat-wet hair. He couldn’t lift his sword to defend himself when Achilleus swung his blade in a terrible, glittering arc, and he flinched, only to be knocked sideways, landing several feet away, winded but without his side cut open.

“Get up!” Achilleus yelled furiously and so Hektor did so.

Achilleus hit him with the flat of his sword again, this time striking his legs out from beneath him, so that Hektor landed on his hands and knees before the great warrior.

“Get up,” Achilleus said, flat and uncaring, but Hektor had seen the emotion that painfully beautiful face hid.

“Stop toying with me,” Hektor snapped as he dragged himself up, his bloody forearm dripping at his side. He held his sword but it hung limply, useless. He felt a rush of violent disgust for the callous creature before him and snarled, “Is this the man Patroklus loved?” He gestured weakly. “What are you? Selfish. Heartless.” Achilleus’s gaze was icy and he twitched with anger. Hektor dragged a breath in. “You were unworthy of him.”

Achilleus screamed and this time when he swung his sword, pain exploded through Hektor’s head and his vision went black.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> What did you think??


End file.
